


A Heartbeat Not Mine

by Linsky



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Angst, Friends to Lovers, Homophobia, M/M, Oblivious, Pining, but not really
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-14
Updated: 2017-10-14
Packaged: 2019-01-17 02:47:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12355878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Linsky/pseuds/Linsky
Summary: Mitch has never thought of himself as homophobic.





	A Heartbeat Not Mine

**Author's Note:**

> Hahahaha okay I don’t really know anything about these two, but I wrote this today in a fit of madness. WHY.*
> 
> No attempt was made at all to follow the Leafs’ season. If you’re trying to learn more about the Leafs or these two or anything, don’t do it from me. :)
> 
> *Cheshyre513 reminded me why -- it was because of that kid with the reddit post! You know the one.
> 
> Title from “Bones” by Marian Call, my latest obsession.
> 
> [Tumblr!](https://linskywords.tumblr.com/)

Mitch has never thought of himself as homophobic.

He’s usually super chill about gay stuff, actually. Dylan came out to him in their draft year, and Mitch mostly remembers thinking that it explained a lot about his relationship with Connor. But maybe it was the distance between London and Erie that made it feel okay, because this stuff he keeps seeing Auston do—Mitch is starting to think that maybe he isn’t okay with it at all.

***

Auston comes out to him in November, when they’ve been playing together for two months.

“Can I talk to you?” he says on the doorstep of Mitch’s parents’ house, hands stuck in his pockets so that his shoulders look even bulkier than usual.

Auston won’t settle once they’re in Mitch’s old bedroom, which is weird because Auston is the chillest person Mitch knows. He, like, carries this pool of calm around with him. Right now, though, he’s hovering by the door with his hands jammed so far in his pockets they’re going to make holes.

“What’s up?” Mitch asks.

“I’m gay,” Auston says, and oh, that explains a lot about the current moment.

“Oh, of course,” Mitch says, and then realizes it was the wrong thing to say when Auston crosses his arms in front of himself and takes a step back. “No, sorry, I mean, that’s totally cool. I have a couple of friends who—well, they’re dating each other, actually. It’s pretty great.”

“Oh.” Auston does seem to relax a little, though his arms are still crossed protectively. “That’s…cool.”

Mitch laughs; he can’t help it. Auston relaxes a little more. “So, are you dating anyone?”

“What? No.” Auston goes tense all over again. “What, no, there’s—I mean, no one knows about me.”

“Oh,” Mitch says. “Wait, really, like, no one? Not even your mom and dad?”

Auston ducks his head, shakes it no, and wow, that’s huge. Mitch knew they were friends, but they’ve only known each other a couple of months, and he assumed Auston had other people he was way closer to than Mitch. “I was, um, hoping you could help me with something,” Auston says.

It turns out Auston wants him to help him pick up guys. “I don’t really know what I’m doing, and I don’t want the team to find out,” Auston explains. He’s sitting on the bed by this point, though Mitch hasn’t convinced him to narrow the five-foot gap between them. “I figured someone else could help me from doing it totally wrong.”

“Sure, of course,” Mitch says. He’ll definitely help a bro out. “Why me, though?” Connor and Dylan would definitely be better at this, though, Mitch supposes, they aren’t here.

Auston shrugs, cheeks brick red. “I didn’t really want to tell anyone else,” he mumbles, and then Mitch has to _awww_ at him and drape himself over Auston’s shoulder until Auston cracks and returns his grin.

***

So Mitch is obviously totally cool with it. He continues to be totally cool with it when he and Auston are on the team bus, making super secret plans for picking up on their road trip.

“We shouldn’t be talking about this here,” Auston says, darting his eyes around at the other guys on the bus.

“No one can hear us,” Mitch whispers. That’s the point of whispering. But Auston doesn’t look convinced, so finally Mitch rolls his eyes and pulls out his phone.

_ok,_ he texts. _the point is, florida is the perfect place to pick up. noone cares abt hockey there._

Auston gives him a long skeptical look, like maybe he thinks Mitch is joking about using their phones to have a conversation when they’re six inches away from each other, but then he starts typing.

_yah but like how???_

Mitch considers this for a moment. _leave it to me,_ he sends, finally.

That night, after their game against the Panthers, a few of the guys want to go out, and Mitch begs off. “I think I might be coming down with something,” he says, and then he attaches himself to Auston’s arm. “Auston, come watch TV with me.”

Auston looks like a deer in the headlights. “Uh…”

“You’re coming down with something?” Zach looks vaguely alarmed. “Is it contagious?”

“Oh. Maybe. But don’t worry, Auston will trade rooms with you,” Mitch says. He nudges on the side of Auston’s foot. “Right, Auston?”

Auston jumps a little. “Sure,” he says, and they swap keycards, Auston still looking clueless. But that’s not too far from his normal expression, so that’s fine.

Mitch steers him around the corner and then drops his arm. “So, you’re not feeling well?” Auston says.

Mitch rolls his eyes. “No, doofus. We’re going to take you to a gay bar.”

“Oh.” Auston’s eyes get really round. “ _Oh._ ”

The gay bar is extremely Floridian. Mitch can’t stop giggling at all the floral shirts, though that may have more to do with the shots they do as soon as they go in (Auston buys them; he never gets carded, because he is unfairly huge).

“What do I do?” Auston says when they’ve gone through their liquid courage. He looks awkward again, like he wants to be taking up less room than he is.

“It’s like picking up girls, right?” Mitch says, and then Auston gives him a look and it occurs to Mitch that maybe Auston doesn’t pick up girls. “Oh, right.”

They end up hanging out near the bar while Mitch interrogates Auston about which guys he thinks are hot. “What about the one with the spiky hair?”

Auston looks stoic.

“Okay. What about the one next to him with the fancy sunglasses?”

Auston looks stoic but also kind of judgey.

“No, you’re right, sunglasses are dumb indoors. At night. How does that person even see? Oh hey, do you think maybe he’s blind?”

Now Auston’s looking judgey in Mitch’s direction.

“Sorry. Focusing. How about…the guy with the gold necklace?”

Something flickers in Auston’s expression.

“Wait, really? Him? The chain dude?”

Auston’s cheeks are turning red.

“No, sorry. You’re right, he’s great.” He is kind of good-looking—the chain is douchey, but he’s got a decent face, and he doesn’t look like he’s forty, unlike some of these other guys. Mitch thinks Auston could do better, but eh, first time out. “Okay, let’s go.”

“What? Where are we going?” Auston asks while Mitch tows him by the wrist towards the guy.

Mitch turns around and grins at him, walking backwards. “You want to meet him, right?”

Auston looks absolutely terrified.

A little too terrified, maybe. “Oh, hey, do you actually—”

“No, I do,” Auston says. The terror doesn’t go out of his eyes. “I just…what do I…”

Mitch grins again. “Leave it to me,” he says, and turns back around and finds the guy.

“Hey,” he says in the guy’s ear, and the guy looks over at him, surprised, then assessing. Mitch puts on his most winning smile. “My friend here is too shy to tell you he wants to buy you a drink.”

The guy looks past Mitch, to Auston, who fortunately hasn’t gotten out of the hold Mitch has on his wrist. The guy smiles, slow, flirty. “He is, is he?”

“Yeah, but I think he’s gonna get over it.” Mitch hauls Auston closer.

Auston’s cheeks are red again, and he keeps looking anywhere but at the guy. “What are you drinking?” he manages to say.

“I don’t know what I was drinking, but from you, I’d take a sex on the beach,” the guy says, and Mitch giggles a little before remembering he shouldn’t be there anymore.

Right. He lets go of Auston’s wrist and beams at him when Auston throws him a startled glance. _Later,_ he mouths, and fades into the crowd.

He doesn’t actually go too far: he takes up a spot near the wall and watches Auston talking to the guy at the bar. It seems like a bad idea to abandon him at this point.

It gets kind of boring, though, just standing and watching. And at first Mitch is proud of how well he did, setting them up, but the longer he watching the more he realizes he doesn’t actually like watching this.

It’s not like they’re actually doing anything. They’re just talking, and Auston’s doing that thing where he looks all shy but is also smiling a little, and it’s just weird to see that aimed at a guy and fuck, is Mitch actually bothered by this?

Okay, it is possible that he’s a terrible person. He pulls out his phone and fiddles with it for a while instead of watching. He keeps looking up every minute or two, though, and every time he sees Auston smiling at the guy, he gets this little twist of revulsion in his gut.

Yeah, no, he does not like seeing this.

Maybe he’s just not used to it yet. He focuses on his phone instead, getting really absorbed in beating his Lumosity scores until someone taps him on the shoulder and he looks up, startled, to see Auston there.

“Hey!” he says, smiling automatically, and then keeping the smile up so that Auston can’t see what he was just thinking about. “What happened to, uh…”

“Scott,” Auston says. He ducks his head. “Uh, nothing. He was nice.”

“But you’re not…”

“Well, no,” Auston says. “We have curfew and shit. I can’t just bring him back to the hotel.”

“Dude, that is literally why I got Zach to switch rooms with you,” Mitch says, and realization dawns on Auston’s face.

“Oh.” He looks back over his shoulder.”Maybe I should…”

_No,_ Mitch almost says, because he’s apparently a hypocrite who talks a big game about gay shit but then can’t handle it in person. “Only if you want,” he says instead, which is a total cop-out but Auston looks relieved by it.

“I think…no,” he says. “I think that was enough for the first time.”

“Yeah?” Mitch says, and he shouldn’t be grinning but he is.

He tries to make it up to Auston when they’re back in the hotel room by putting on TV shows he likes and snuggling against his side, to show that he’s not creeped out by him. Not that Auston has any reason to think he is. Whatever; Mitch can overcompensate if he wants.

“How was it tonight?” he asks when they’re both getting sleepy.

Auston’s quiet for a minute. Mitch is unaccountably nervous about the answer. “I don’t know,” he says finally. “It was…weird, I guess? But also good. Really cool to realize that’s a thing I can actually do if I want to. It didn’t feel like it was, before.”

“I’m glad,” Mitch says, and he mostly even means it.

***

Mitch decides that the thing to do is to just be as supportive as possible, so he makes sure to talk to Auston about it a lot. “So what kind of guy do you like?”

Auston chokes on his coffee a little. “I don’t know. What kind of girl do you like?”

“Hot ones,” Mitch says. Auston has seen him pick up. He knows what kind of girl Mitch likes.

“So, I like hot guys,” Auston says.

“Yeah, but what does that meeeean,” Mitch says, and when Auston makes scoffing noises, “Come on. If I’m going to help you pick up, I need to know this stuff.”

“You don’t have to help me pick up,” Auston says—mumbles really—and Mitch doesn’t like that answer. He doesn’t want to be left out, which shows personal growth on the gay thing, probably.

“No, but I want to. You want me to. Right?”

“I don’t want you to feel like you have to,” Auston says. “I know it’s weird.”

“It’s not weird.” Mitch is going to make it not weird. “I’m your wingman. You gotta let me fly.”

Auston looks vaguely disgusted by that. Mitch cackles happily.

Auston still won’t tell him what kind of guy he likes. But that’s okay: Mitch will figure it out the next time they go out.

***

The next time they go out turns out to be when they play the ’Canes, and the type of guy Auston goes for is skinny hipsters. They’re in a club in Raleigh, and Auston is leaning against the wall, this skinny hipster-y guy standing in the V of his legs with Auston’s fingers hooked in his belt loops.

Auston’s fingers are hooked in his belt loops. If Mitch were a better person, he wouldn’t want to gag at that.

No, but he’s watching, and it’s all good, until the guy leans in and kisses Auston and Mitch wants to punch him in the face.

Or, well, really he wants to be good at punching so that he could punch him in the face, because as it is the guy would probably just laugh at him. But their faces are, like, touching, and Auston’s eyes are closed and Mitch can’t even look at this.

He looks down instead, breathing hard. Maybe he was trying to take in too much at once. Maybe he needs to pace himself, with this getting-used-to-the-gay thing.

He goes outside the club and stands there in the stupid warm weather that Raleigh has even in December and tries not to think about that guy’s tongue in Auston’s mouth. He could maybe go back to the hotel—it looks like Auston and the guy are going to hook up, and Mitch doesn’t need to hang around here for that. Though if they’re going to hook up, maybe they’ll want to use the hotel room. Fuck. Mitch wonders if Auston will text him to let him know.

“There you are,” Auston says, not that much later, and Mitch looks up in surprise.

“What?” He looks around for the guy. “Are you guys headed out?”

“Huh? Oh, no. I’m not gonna—I mean, I’m ready to leave, but. Not with him.”

“Why not? You can have the room,” Mitch says. He is going to support this fuck out of this situation. “Hymie’s in with Brownie.”

“Yeah, but…” Auston’s face is red again. “I just think I don’t want to? Yet? I don’t know.”

“Oh, hey, that’s fine.” Mitch is totally not relieved by that or anything. “You don’t have to rush things.”

“Maybe next time,” Auston says, but he still sounds nervous about it.

“Yeah. Sure,” Mitch says, and when they start walking towards their Uber, he can’t help but smile, because apparently he’s a terrible person.

_im a terrible person,_ he sends to Dylan.

_well we all knew that already,_ Dylan sends back right away.

***

The third time, Auston brings a guy back to the hotel.

Mitch shouldn’t be blindsided by it, but he is. He’d sort of started to think that it would take a really long time for this to happen—like, months. Auston seemed like he was so nervous about it. But this time, he shoots Mitch a text while Mitch is in the bathroom, just, _headed back to the hotel, give us a couple hours?_ and Mitch stands by the wall outside the bathroom doors, staring at the words on the screen.

He goes back to the hotel anyway and hangs out in the lobby. He tries to tell himself that he’s totally fine with it, that it doesn’t bug him to think of Auston in there with another guy. And, like, on an intellectual level, he doesn’t have a problem with it. But then he thinks about how they’re probably _naked_ and _pressed together_ and Mitch thought he was a way better person than this.

The important thing is that Auston doesn’t find out. It’s okay if Mitch is, like, scum, as long as he doesn’t make Auston feel weird about it. 

He gets the all-clear text a while later and goes back to the room, trying not to notice if it smells like sex (it does). “So, how was it?” he asks, putting on a big smile and his most annoying voice as he climbs into bed.

Auston is flushed, and his hair is messed up. “Um. Fine.”

“Only fine?” Mitch asks, and then Auston opens his mouth and Mitch realizes he really, violently doesn’t want to know.

“It was…good. I don’t know,” Auston says, and even that is more than Mitch wanted to know, somehow.

He means to stay facing Auston’s bed, to be supportive, but it feels like he’s leaving himself open in a weird way, so he turns around and curls up under the sheets. “Mm. Good,” he says, trying to sound sleepy enough that Auston won’t try to talk to him anymore.

He wonders if Auston’s sheets are dirty from having sex. He wonders if Auston showered already or if the guy’s come is on his body somewhere. He wonders why he can’t just be happy for him instead of being all weird about it.

***

The fourth time it happens, he calls Dylan.

“Am I a homophobe?” he asks.

Dylan snorts and then sounds like he’s coughing. “I’m sorry, what?”

“Am I a homophobe?” Mitch repeats. He’s in a hotel lobby in Nashville, staring at a potted plant because Auston sexiled him again, and Dylan should take him seriously.

“Why would you think you’re a homophobe?” Dylan asks. “Do you hate gay people?”

“No. Obviously not.” Except that it’s not obvious, because he seems to hate everyone who puts their hands on Auston. Including the slimy hair-gel dude who was sticking his tongue down Auston’s throat tonight and is up there right now probably with his mouth on—

“I just think I could be more supportive,” he says.

“Dude, you support the shit out of me and Connor,” Dylan says. “You sent us an anniversary gift, remember?”

It’s easy to support Connor and Dylan. Mitch has never seen them kissing and wanted to gouge his own eyes out. Maybe that’s just because they don’t kiss in front of him, but still.

“There’s this other guy,” Mitch says. “He came out to me, and I feel like…maybe I’m not handling things right, you know?”

“Why, did you say stuff to him?”

“No.” Mitch has been very careful not to do anything to let Auston know how he feels about the guys he hooks up with. “I mean, yeah, but only good stuff.”

“So…what’s the problem?”

Mitch flops back against the stupid uncomfortable lobby couch. “I don’t know. I just feel like I could be better, you know?”

“Stop being so hard on yourself and go get a girlfriend or something,” Dylan says.

Yeah, Mitch probably should get a girlfriend. It would stop him from spending all his time thinking about Auston’s sex life, anyway.

***

He manages not to do or say anything really dumb until they’re in L.A., when they’re lying around in Mitch’s hotel room before a game. Mitch doesn’t know where Hymie went—maybe he gave up on ever actually sharing a hotel room with Mitch, after the last six cities where Mitch made him switch. They’re supposed to be getting ready to nap, but Mitch has been thinking about tonight, about how this is another city where Auston can pick up without getting recognized and how Mitch will have to sit in the lobby knowing exactly what’s going on a couple hundred feet above him. Well, not exactly what’s going on, he thinks, and he has the weird thought that maybe it would help, knowing, and then he hears himself asking, “So what do you do with these guys when you bring them back here?”

“Um,” Auston says. Mitch regrets his question immediately. “I guess I, um. I don’t know. You’ve been at the clubs.”

“Yeah.” Mitch cannot believe he just asked that. He’s definitely not looking over at Auston. “Is it different?” he asks, and oh fuck, he’s doing it again. “Like, kissing a guy instead of a girl?”

“I mean.” Auston still sounds weirded out. “It doesn’t do a lot for me when I kiss a girl, so.”

“But it does when you kiss a guy.” Mitch is breathing a little hard. He’s not, like, totally freaked out, though. Maybe it’s good to be able to talk about this stuff. “What makes it different? Like, is it their size, or…”

“Uh, I guess it’s mostly knowing that it’s a guy,” Auston says. He’s talking really quietly. “Like, their mouths aren’t necessarily different, but sometimes they’ll kiss harder, and there’s…stubble, and, I don’t know. It’s not any one thing.”

Mitch opens his eyes and looks across the room. Auston’s looking at the ceiling, his cheeks red. “You like stubble?”

“Yeah,” Auston says, his voice the barest whisper, and Mitch’s lips tingle.

“So what do you do with them?” Mitch asks. “When you take one back to the hotel?”

Auston darts a glance at him, like he’s wondering if he really wants to know. “I guess it depends.”

“Do you fuck them?” Mitch asks. “Or do you let them fuck you?”

Auston sucks in air like he’s been punched. “I…usually I fuck them, yeah.”

Mitch imagines Auston bending over the shadowy form of a dude, fucking him, and somehow it doesn’t bother him as much as it usually does. At least, he doesn’t want to stop hearing about it. “What does it feel like?”

“It’s…” Auston’s eyes are squeezed shut. “It’s really tight, I guess?” he says finally, his voice cracking a little. “Like, so much pressure around my cock. It’s…amazing.”

“Is it hard to, uh.” Mitch doesn’t know why his mouth is so dry. “Is it hard to last like that?”

“Sometimes,” Auston says. “But I try to make sure I’m hitting their…you know, their prostate, and then…fuck, if I do it right, sometimes they’ll make these sounds…”

“Oh,” Mitch says, high-pitched, and doesn’t even know why he says it.

There’s a silence after that, where Mitch stares at Auston and Auston stares at the ceiling. Mitch’s breath is coming really fast.

“I’m gonna.” Auston sits up. “Bathroom.” He gets up and disappears behind the door, and Mitch breathes out in relief.

He rolls over and presses his aching cock against the mattress.

***

He doesn’t go with Auston when he picks up that night. “Not feeling up to it,” he says, and Auston hovers for a minute, concerned, but Mitch shoos him out the door. Once he’s gone, Mitch gets in the shower and jerks off, like, three times in a row.

Auston doesn’t bring a guy back to the room that night. Mitch is almost hoping he will, just for a glimpse of it, but Auston comes back alone after midnight, lips pink and bitten and his hair all mussed.

“Good night?” Mitch asks, and Auston jumps.

“Uh, yeah,” he says, rubbing the back of his neck, and Mitch hates the pictures that come into his head.

They beat the Ducks two nights later, and Auston looks a question at Mitch in the locker room. Mitch doesn’t want to go out—doesn’t want to see Auston kissing other guys again—but he nods anyway.

He regrets it as soon as they’re back in the hotel, changing. “You know, I think maybe I’m not gonna go,” he says.

Auston looks surprised. “Are you still feeling out of it?”

“No, I’m just…” He grins and shrugs to try and play it off. “I guess it’s not really my scene, you know? And since you don’t need me to hook you up anymore..”

“Oh. Oh, fuck, I’m sorry.” Auston looks vaguely horrified. “Sorry, I didn’t think. I guess it just seemed like you were having fun, and I liked it when you were with me, so…”

_So you should stay home with me,_ Mitch thinks, and then regrets everything about his life. “You know what, let’s go,” he says.

“What? But…”

“I changed my mind. Really, it’ll be fun,” he says, when Auston hovers uncertainly.

They go to the same club Auston went to two nights ago, apparently, and Auston is obviously working hard to make Mitch feel included. “What do you think about that guy?” he asks, tipping his head towards a guy with a beard. “Should I hook up with him?”

Mitch looks at him and imagines Auston bending to kiss him, that focused look coming over his face. “Yeah, sure.”

“Wow, that’s convincing,” Auston says.

“Sorry, I just.” Mitch doesn’t know what he just. He’s having a hard time figuring it out with Auston right next to him, about to go make out with another dude. “Um, do what you want, I guess.”

Auston takes a step back. “Are you—are you not okay with this?”

“What?” Mitch jerks his head up. “Of course I am.”

Auston is looking at him all weird, like he’s trying to figure him out. “Because it seemed like you were. But, like…I’m not sure what’s going on with you right now.”

“I’m just in a bad mood,” Mitch snaps. “Go, I don’t know, go fuck some guy or whatever.”

“Wow, okay,” Auston says, and he gets like three steps away before Mitch grabs his wrist.

“No, wait. Sorry.” Mitch can’t quite look at him, but he can’t let him walk away like this, either. His heart is going crazy. “I’m sorry. Just, stay.”

“Why?” Auston asks, voice cold.

Mitch tugs him closer. He still can’t look at his face, but Auston lets himself be pulled, so Mitch takes a step closer and tips his head so that his forehead rests on Auston’s shoulder. “I just…don’t like watching you hook up with other dudes,” he says.

The club is loud, but he’s pretty sure Auston hears him anyway by the way he goes tense. Mitch scrunches his face up and stays still, heart thudding in his ears. Then, after an eternity, Auston’s free hand comes up to rest, gentle, at his waist.

“Other dudes,” Auston says, sounding uncertain, “like, other than…”

“Me,” Mitch says, his hand impossibly tight on Auston’s wrist, and then Auston is bringing his hand up to tilt Mitch’s chin.

“You think I shouldn’t be hooking up with guys other than you,” Auston says, and his nose is dumb and his face is stupid and his eyes are dark and it’s all Mitch can do to nod.

The next moment, Auston’s mouth is against his, and Mitch isn’t disgusted by this at all.


End file.
